German SPD gives green light to talks with Merkel

German leader of the Social Democratic Party Martin Schulz speaks during a press conference on December 1, 2017 in Berlin | Maurizio Gambarini/AFP via Getty Images

BERLIN — Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) on Thursday backed party leaders holding talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel that could lead to a new coalition government.

Party leader Martin Schulz put his vision of a federal Europe at the heart of his approach to the talks, declaring he wanted to see a United States of Europe by 2025.

In a show of hands, delegates at a party conference in Berlin voted by a large majority to back a motion laying out the center-left party’s priorities in talks with the longtime chancellor’s Christian Democrats.

The vote does not necessarily mean the party is ready to enter another grand coalition as Merkel’s junior partner, a role it held in the last government. The party wants to discuss various options, including supporting a minority government led by Merkel. The parties could also conclude that no deal can be done — which would almost certainly lead to a new election.

“We don’t need to govern at all costs, but we must not avoid governing at all costs either,” Schulz told delegates in urging them to back the motion.

“I promise to you that we will consider every possible path,” Schulz said, stressing that talks were “open-ended,” and that there was “no automatism for anything.”

Also at the conference, Schulz was re-elected as party leader with 82 percent of the votes. He was the sole candidate for the post.

After suffering the worst result in the party’s history in September’s general election, the SPD initially declared it would not serve again as Merkel’s junior partner in a “grand coalition” between Germany’s two biggest parties and would instead rebuild in opposition.

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But the party has been under heavy pressure to abandon that stance after the collapse last month of talks on forming a government between Merkel’s conservative bloc, the liberal Free Democrats and the Greens.

Schulz rowed back on his rejection of a grand coalition after an appeal from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. However, some sections of the party remain strongly opposed to a new tie-up with Merkel.

“A renewal of the SPD can happen outside of a grand coalition — or it won’t happen at all,” Kevin Kühnert, the head of the SPD’s more left-leaning youth wing, said Thursday, triggering applause from the convention.

As a first step following Thursday’s vote, Schulz and the SPD’s parliamentary group leader, Andrea Nahles, are set to meet with their counterparts from the conservatives in the days or weeks to come.

Afterward, an inner circle of the party leadership will decide whether to start “exploratory talks” with Merkel’s bloc. If those talks bear fruit, a party convention will decide whether to begin formal negotiations. Several weeks down the line, at the end of those negotiations, the party would hold a vote among all its members on whether to enter a new grand coalition.